Quick question for those actively running stores. Where are most of your sales coming from right now?
For me it’s been mostly paid ads, but CAC has been climbing pretty fast lately, and it’s starting to feel less controllable than it used to.
Are you seeing the same thing or is something else working better right now?
Biggest needle-mover for me was a post-purchase email flow timed around when customers actually run out of the product. Not some generic “hey come back” email 30 days later — I looked at my repeat purchase data in Analytics > Reports > Returning customer rate and figured out the real reorder window for my top SKUs.
The other thing most stores overlook is the thank-you page. I added reorder incentives right there while the buyer is still excited. That alone bumped my repeat rate more than any loyalty program I’ve tried.
Oh hey again
you seem pretty serious about retention and the strategy behind your flows, respect for that
do you spend a lot of time tweaking them though?
Yeah CAC on Meta is brutal right now.
Fwiw on tweaking flows—once you get a solid post-purchase sequence dialed in, it’s mostly set and forget. I check my Klaviyo flows maybe once a quarter to update creative or adjust the timing if open rates drop. The heavy lifting is just the initial setup.
Aside from email, I’ve been leaning hard into SEO on my main store. Takes way longer to see results but the traffic is basically free once it ranks. Definitely helps offset the paid ad costs.
On repeat purchases, there’s actually a store I just interviewed that cracked this really well.
PTC Auto sells car accessories. Repeat purchases were basically nonexistent because their best-sellers (car mats, luggage trays) last for years. But last month they pulled in ~$10.5K and 162 orders through promotions alone - no ads.
Their approach was two-part:
Expand into consumables: foam cleansers, microfiber towels, car fragrances. Products that run out and need replacing regularly.
Build a promotion system to drive trial and lock in the habit.
Repeat purchases happen out of habit, not because you ran another ad.
Once someone has tried your products, they’re not going back to browse around.
The reason this compounds over time: each tactic is designed to get customers deeper into your product ecosystem.
If you’d like to learn more, you can check out my interview with PTC Auto founder here.
Wish you luck with your business,
Ellie from BOGOS team
Hi @Dima254 Lesle here from the Dollarlabs team.
We’re seeing the same trend across a lot of stores right now - paid is still driving volume, but CAC is getting harder to control, especially once you’ve saturated your best audiences.
One thing that’s been working better recently isn’t necessarily finding new channels, but squeezing more out of existing traffic.
A lot of brands we work with are shifting focus to:
Increasing repeat purchase rate
Pulling forward the second order
Giving customers a reason to come back without relying on ads again
That’s where store credit / cashback has been interesting.
Across our base, brands are seeing:
~20–30% of revenue coming from store credit-driven orders
Repeat rates in the 50–60% range
It doesn’t replace paid, but it makes CAC feel a lot more sustainable because you’re not starting from zero every time.
We built an app around this (Dollarback), and one of the brands we worked with last year added ~€17k in 30 days just from this lever (article).
One thing I’d add to the great suggestions above — before you decide what to do about retention, figure out where the leaks are.
Shopify actually has built-in RFM scoring now (Analytics → Reports → Customer reports). It groups your customers into segments like Champions, At Risk, Dormant, etc. Most store owners don’t even know it’s there.
Start by checking how many customers are in your “At Risk” and “Can’t Lose Them” groups. If those numbers are growing, that’s your biggest lever — winning back those people is way cheaper than acquiring new ones through ads.
The challenge is that Shopify’s built-in version doesn’t track changes over time or sync with your email tools. So you’d need to check it manually or use a dedicated app to automate that part. But even just looking at it once gives you a much clearer picture of where to focus.
Hi @Dima254 ,
have you tried building a brand and a content pipeline? That can potentially pay off in the long run. Lots of ecom stores competing for attention nowadays, so it pays to differentiate.
And speaking of your regular traffic, have you tried bumping your average order value with different apps or custom solutions?
Full disclosure: I run AS Quantity Break & Upsell App, and we’re seeing even small brands with mid 4 figure monthly revenue add 10-15% extra revenue every month with our solution, which has a very generous free plan with unlimited features.
Regardless of your interest in upsells or discount apps, the brand building advice still stands, and I think is what will help ecommerce brands get ahead in the next decade.
Most sales from paid while CAC climbs fast and gets harder to control. Before layering RFM, cashback or email flows on top of that number, worth confirming the CAC is real. Meta and Shopify count the same purchase under different rules. The gap from their attribution windows is structural and you have to live with it. The part that actually inflates CAC is when the native Shopify Meta app and a server-side setup both fire the Purchase event without a shared event_id, so Meta counts the same order twice. At that point the budget is paying for double-counted conversions, and the whole retention plan sits on an overstated denominator.
Jumping in on this older post to see if anyone has found success with loyalty or referral programs to encourage repeat purchases. Also curious about how SEO efforts are impacting your user acquisition costs. Any new insights or strategies that have proven effective? Looking forward to hearing how others have evolved their approaches over time!
Jumping in on this older post to see if anyone has found success with loyalty or referral programs to encourage repeat purchases. Also curious about how SEO efforts are impacting your user acquisition costs. Any new insights or strategies that have proven effective? Looking forward to hearing how others have evolved their approaches over time!
I realize this is from a while ago, but has anyone tried integrating personalized recommendations with their email flows? I’ve found that tailoring suggestions based on past purchases or browsing habits can work wonders in boosting repeat sales. I’m curious to hear if anyone else has experimented with this approach and what your experiences have been. Let’s keep the conversation going!
